Comments

Comment by Hurono

Very nice tanking necklace obtained through Valor points. Though this seems to have been left out in the heroic version upgrades through Crystallized Firestones, it has more avoidance than the Firebound Gorget and its regular counterpart, though when you're this far into raiding and your gearing matches that, you may desire more expertise compared to avoidance for more and more situations.

TL;DR: Cooler tank piece than all but one item from T11, bro!

Comment by Bonkura

Bought this while I was gearing up my prot pally, then ended up switching to retri as main and still use it because of the mastery and equal strength. The strength dps item (Stoneheart Choker) you get from valor is so hard to fit in with so much other expertise heavy gear for pallies so I wouldn't be surprised if I end up keeping this until 4.3 is released.

Blizzard so mean to Paladins this patch. :<

Comment by lorgon

Best choice of all tanking necklaces in 4.2.

Of course, there aren't a lot of options. There's this one, the Firebound Gorget (a rare BOE drop) and its associated heroic upgrade, and Caelestrasz's Will, which drops from Sinestra in Heroic BOT. That's pretty much it. The logical comparison is to the Firebound Gorget, which is the only other one that is relatively easy to obtain (if you're willing to spend a substantial amount of gold).

It isn't obvious which is better, but you can get an idea by running some numbers for a paladin with 1600 dodge/parry and 3000 mastery without necklace. For total damage reduction, assume 31% reduction for blocked hits (i.e., shield meta, but not accounting for holy shield use). The results:

Firebound:

Dodge: 1646 - 13.48% block chance

Parry: 1646 - 13.48% parry chance

Mastery: 3227 - 63.50% block chance

46.65% reduction from dodge/parry/block

Stoneheart:

Dodge: 1600- 13.28% block chance

Parry: 1790 - 14.12% parry chance

Mastery: 3165 - 62.72% block chance

46.84% reduction from dodge/parry/block

The results are similar if you instead assume 1900 dodge/parry and 3300 mastery, corresponding to mid 370's gear approaching block cap: 50.45% reduction for the firebound gorget, and 50.62% for the stoneheart necklace.

In both cases, this necklace edges out the BOE. This makes this necklace a good use of VP's, since (unless you have a Crystallized Firestone and nothing better to do with it than upgrade the firestone gorget) there are no better necklaces available to a firelands raider.

Edit 1: It turns out that, for the 1600/1600/3000 dodge/parry/mastery assumption, it also edges out Caelestrasz's Will (46.74%) and Heroic Firebound Gorget (46.82%). This makes it not only the best value, but arguably the best-in-slot (or close enough not to make a difference), although of course you lose the expertise of the gorget. So you want the expertise, can an afford to purchase the gorget (or get lucky on a drop), and you're swimming in Crystallized Firestones, get the heroic gorget. Otherwise, this is the one to take.

Edit 2: Not sure why this is downrated; I believe all the information is true.